More research

Another day doing “research.” Besides not having any free time whatsoever, the main reason I haven’t played video games in years is that there haven’t been any games that I’ve been interested in playing. I don’t like first person shooters or role playing games. I don’t like sports games. (In general – there are certainly exceptions to those rules.) What I have become interested in are games with experimental game play.

So today I played Crayon Physics, Everyday Shooter (from Steam), and Flow. Crayon Physics belongs to the game genre I refer to as “playing around with physics.” I really like those games, but the ones I have played have been more toys than games. So they’re interesting for about 20-30 minutes. There are some really interesting ideas in Flow about how the player creates their experience, but it didn’t really suck me in. It was very soothing, which is different and nice. But I ended up playing Everyday Shooter for most of the afternoon. Very classic shooter, but the interplay between visuals and audio was very cool, almost hallucinogenic. I haven’t made it past the second level yet.

Last week I got Portal from Steam and have been playing that a lot. Wow. What an amazing game. Puzzle games are my favorite, and the Portal gun is such a great twist. The characterization of the narrator is hilarious. Portal is fully a first person shooter, so I’ve just contradicted myself, but it’s not a war, shoot-em-up, kill-em-all, everyone must die, kill, kill, kill game. I hate to be such a wimp about subject matter, but I just don’t enjoy those kinds of games At All. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed House of the Dead in the arcade, but that is cartoonish. I like cartoonish violence.